Develop And Apply Your Knowledge, And You Will Rise To The Top In Business

Most people are taught that obtaining more education and academic degrees will be helpful to their careers

. Yet in a tough economic environment, recent college graduates often find themselves competing with hundreds of others for very few open positions. So the lesson for achieving career success must go beyond just having more education than most other people.

Let's look more closely at how knowledge affects business careers. Here's the key question: What knowledge is required to rise to the top in business?

In one sense, the question is all but impossible to answer because new knowledge is forming so rapidly that few can hope to keep up with all of it and because the next knowledge to be developed may show lots of what is known today to be inaccurate or incomplete.

In another sense, the answer to what knowledge is required is simple. You can benefit by knowing more than the people you are competing with, whether for obtaining a job or for profitably selling your offerings in the marketplace.

But being able to quote theories from books or spout random facts from the Internet isn't going to be nearly enough: You also need to be able to apply what you learn with aptitude and swiftness to make a valuable difference for your business.

That lesson is well demonstrated by lions and zebras in the wild. Lions need to run faster than the slowest zebras in order to eat. Zebras need to run faster than the fastest lions to be able to survive.

What then are the key lessons for thriving in a business career?

1. Don't seek just knowledge, but rather knowledge that is easy for you to apply in making big improvements for your business.

2. Go beyond learning new knowledge, become good at applying it in valuable ways.

3. Expand your skill in employing your knowledge by continually taking on bigger challenges.

4. Look for opportunities to expand your knowledge, skills, and experience into more aspects of business so that you can be successful in bigger and more significant leadership roles.

5. Keep setting higher career goals to direct your choice of what knowledge to acquire, skills to master, and experiences to develop.

In considering these lessons, let's look at an example of what can be done, Ms. Alice Yaledi, an MBA graduate of Rushmore University. Let me tell you a little about her family background, education, and business career to flesh out the five key lessons.

Ms. Yaledi learned a survival lesson while still young. Her family was from Tanzania but lived in Uganda where her father worked as a civil servant for the national government. During Idi Amin Dada's regime, her father realized that the family was in danger, and they escaped with just the clothes on their backs a few hours before a Ugandan army team arrived at their home to kill them.

Two years later circumstances had changed in Uganda, her family returned, and her father again took up his responsibilities with the government. The lesson of this experience is that times can change quickly, and you have to be fast on your feet to survive.

Ms. Yaledi did well in Ugandan schools, first completing her ordinary certificate and later earning an advanced one. Next she was awarded a Higher Diploma in Accountancy from a Ugandan college. Diploma in hand, she returned to Tanzania where she accepted a job offer to work in the savings department of the National Bank of Commerce.

Ms. Yaledi's employer liked her work and enrolled her in various short courses to help her add new knowledge that was related to her job, such as in how to handle irate customers. Because of her winning ways, she was quickly posted to a better position working with the bank's corporate clients.

Her career headed in a new direction just a few months later when the bank adopted a new computer system intended to serve its customers better and she was selected to attend a three month course in how to use the new software. At the same time her working hours were reduced, and she decided to learn more about computers. Over the next two years she earned a Higher Diploma in Computer Studies from the Institute of Management of Information Systems UK, which taught the courses in Tanzania.

Ms. Yaledi then began to make rapid progress by applying her new skills and knowledge, first as a systems analyst and designer, next as a system administrator and supervisor, and then as the person in charge of computerizing a trust bank and training its users. In the last job the work pace was more than she wanted as a new mother, and she found greener pastures by taking a new job as an IT manager at an insurance company.

Her optimistic vision of what could be accomplished through education was undimmed. She looked forward to increasing her income so she could afford to pay for a better education for her sons than she had received. She also hoped to accomplish so much in business that her achievements would be publicly recognized.

Ms. Yaledi also felt that earning an MBA degree and a Ph.D. degree would help her accomplish more in her business career. As her next learning step, she enrolled in an MBA program.

She was very interested in applying whatever she learned to her work. While still a new student, she redesigned one of her employer's most important business processes at a cost of $10,000 to create annual savings of over $800,000. Her paper describing that project is still used as an example for new MBA students taking a course in how to make breakthroughs.

Ms. Yaledi's impressive work wasn't done yet. From the course in making breakthroughs, she learned that it's good to look again frequently at breakthrough solutions to see if other significant opportunities exist to make further improvements.

In one of her final papers she redesigned the business process that she had already improved once so that the remaining costs declined by another 96 percent from the already reduced level while improving performance for customers.

Based on her expanded problem-solving skills and an MBA degree, she found that it was easier to get jobs and to star in those new roles. She can use the theory, information, and practical experience she had gained through becoming an MBA to quickly craft excellent solutions for any employer or client.

Realizing that capability, she opened a consultancy to help others gain useful theory, information, and practical experience as well. She also enjoys new-found respect on the job because of her knowledge and credentials.

Ms. Yaledi has big plans for the future: earning a Ph.D. degree, starting an educational business institute, retiring young, traveling around the world, establishing orphanages and care centers for the aged to serve needy people, and being an evangelist for Jesus Christ.

Her career progress was undoubtedly helped by information technology (IT) being a field where knowledge is constantly developing and improving. Stick with just what you know today in IT, and you won't be able to do enough to be competitive.

However, the career lessons apply to a variety of other business fields because markets, customers, economic environments, and other non-technical factors are also rapidly changing. Solutions for adapting to these shifts in many cases involve applying IT in new, more effective ways and reducing costs. As a result, more businesspeople should make a point of adding knowledge about how to apply IT to their responsibilities.

What should you do?

1. Set career goals for the near, medium, and longer terms.

2. Investigate to learn what knowledge you still need to add in order to meet those career goals.

3. Develop learning plans to gain the knowledge and experience you need to improve your effectiveness in ways that other businesspeople will value.

4. Continually refine and upgrade your career and learning goals.

When you do those things, you will have the advantage of continually enhancing your ability to rise to the top in business.

by: Donald Mitchell

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